Is to mention an odd symptom you’re experiencing and attach to it a word like anemia.

I made that mistake last night at dinner. I’ve been having really chapped lips and cracking at the corners of my mouth, and I was eating a salad with vinaigrette dressing. Hurt like heck, and of course between my wincing I had to explain that my lips had been unusually chapped for the past three days with no apparent cause. And that I had done a cursory search on the web and one possible cause was iron-deficiency anemia.

It was entertained as a possibility. After all, haven’t I been tired lately? But I’ve been busy, too, and seeing as chapped lips is an obscure anemia-related condition, and that I have absolutely no other symptoms, I dismissed the idea. But that didn’t stop my parents from worrying. Today my dad kept asking about how my lips were as though they might be some indication that I had a rare form of Tibetan flea disease, or something…

I don’t.

The lips ended up resolving themselves, but not before my dad came into my room with a serious expression and said, “You know what I think the missing piece of the puzzle is?”

My first thought, prayer. Talk about a kick in the conscience.

But dad said, “Excercise.” Figures…